Episode 6: Mashup

Whether it's in the baseball dugout, at home, or out in the community, many Canadians are spicing up their English conversation by tossing in words from different languages such as Hindi, Arabic, or Spanish. It includes Canada's Major League Baseball team, the Blue Jays, who speak a surprising amount of Spanglish! We'll hear personal stories about other mashups happening across our country, and find out why it is we mix languages together. We'll wrap up with the winner of our Best Borrowed Word contest!

We'll find out why people borrow or "code switch" between languages from Rena Helms-Park, who teaches linguistics at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Then it's onto Rhonda Lucy who tells us about mixing Ojibway with her English, producing beautiful music in the meanwhile.

In Saskatoon, we'll meet a family who came from India to settle there, a few of the thousands of immigrants who come to Saskatchewan every year. They blend Tamil and Telegu with their English.

And we'll hear the poignant story of Berta Banks who wanted no mashup at all, refusing to pass on her mother tongue to her daughter. She'll tell us why, and how she's making up for it.

Finally, the episode wraps up with the announcement of the winner of our "Borrowed Words" contest: the best new word from a foreign language that Canadian English is missing. Zarqa Nawaz, the creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, picks the winner!